


falling

by bendingwind



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-14
Updated: 2011-08-14
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:18:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingwind/pseuds/bendingwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He always catches her, when she falls. Based on a prompt by quill_nostalgia @ <a href="watch-them-run.livejournal.com">watch-them-run</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	falling

_There are things he never tells her, things she’d rather not know—but she is an exception, an oddity in space and time, human and Time Lord and different—and she is a woman, and not blind._

“I’m sorry,” she says once, when he looks at her with eyes that are so sad, and so old.

“Sorry for what?” he asks, cheerfully. The Doctor dissembles and distracts and lies, but his eyes never do.

“You know what.” And his eyes tell her that he does.

***

In all her life, there is only one time that River Song does not trust the Doctor. She is twenty-one and his greatest enemy, only something’s gone a bit off and she finds herself being rescued by him. Or rescuing him. It’s difficult to say.

“I am not jumping off a cliff just because you tell me so,” she barks at him. He beams at her, for all the world like a nine-year-old at his birthday party.

“How else am I supposed to get a look up that lovely evening gown of yours?” he asks, with twinkling eyes. She stares at him, aghast, until she becomes aware that her jaw is hanging loose and shuts her mouth.

“I beg your pardon?” she snaps.

He winks, and she pushes him over the edge. He waves as he falls, and a blue box is there to catch him with a splash. She sighs and looks behind her, where the Koroneese are approaching with clacking pincers and glittering, multi-faceted eyes. With a sigh, she jumps after him.

“You see?” he says, as she climbs out of the grandiose swimming pool. “I always catch you when you fall.”

***

“You came,” she says, shivering as she rolls off of him. Her hair is dripping and the formal gown she wore to dinner is utterly destroyed.

“Always do,” he says, not quite meeting her eyes.

“I thought I killed you last time,” she says, as she pulls herself to her feet. He has already bound to a standing position.

“Hard to kill,” he mutters, already moving towards the console of his time machine, “And that wasn’t me, anyway. The universe’s great trickster, all that rubbish, did you think it would be that easy?”

“And all for me,” she says, very quietly. “Why did you do it?”

He shrugs.

“Can I trust you, Doctor?” she asks, then.

“If you like,” he answers, and for the first time the ghost of a smile plays around his lips, “But where’s the fun in that?”

***

“It’s a bit of a thing for us, the diving off tall structures or out of fast-moving objects in an evening gown, isn’t it?”

“Ah, that would be, er, spoilers,” he says. He’s smiling at her, though.

“I’ll make a note of it,” she says with a grin.

***

She runs from the house, gasping for breath and nearly in tears, and he is waiting for her on the front lawn.

“They—I—I should have known, I, I wasn’t ready to meet them yet, I thought they were dead all these years—” she babbles, and he opens his arms. She ignores the offer, and dives under one outstretched limb and into the TARDIS.

“You certainly dressed up for the occasion,” he says quietly, as she collapses onto the stairs. As seats go, it’s not very comfortable, but it will do. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to meet your parents?”

“Would you have stopped me? Gone along? One big happy family…” she snaps.

“No,” he says, and doesn’t elaborate.

“Oh,” she says, and then: “I shouldn’t trust you, but I do.”

“You always did,” he says.

***

The years pass, marked by leaps of faith and approximately seventy formal evening gowns, which have a certain history of being recycled as cleaning rags when all is said and done.

***

He’s gone and got another hat while she wasn’t looking, or more accurately one of the veils worn by tertiary wives on Midhart Siffa. It looks ridiculous, but she can’t quite think of a way to shoot it off without getting rid of his head as well.

“You’re going to have to take off that veil if you want your hello kiss,” she says, slinking up to him. He beams at her.

“Nonsense,” he says, and he lifts the front portion. She leans in close, wrapping a hand around the back of his neck, and she tugs the veil off. A quick pull of her trigger and it’s reduced to dust.

“Hey!” he shouts.

She dances away.

“Better luck next time!” she calls, sing-song, as he scrambles after her.

“Get back here, I want my kiss!” he shouts, and they laugh as they run through the TARDIS.

***

“You were nearly killed,” he shouts, slamming her back into a wall. She winces.

“You did catch me,” she points out, in what she hopes is a reasonable tone.

“Don’t ever risk something like that again!” he shouts, and she wonders if he knows she’s spent most of her life falling, and that he always finds a way to catch her.

***

“Ah, then, nice to see you, sweetie,” she laughs. She’s caught in a gravity bubble in the middle of his console room, her skirts floating about her. She can see the moment he notices and, with a blush, releases the bubble. With a smile, she drops neatly to the ground and brushes off her dress.

“We’re off to the spice mines of Gheddis,” she says, and as one they move around the console.

***

She’s dressed in a fashionably old-fashioned evening gown, black, and killer red heels. She’s kissed him for the final time and killed for him for the final time and here she is, sending a message into space and time. She’s wearing her evening gown, her hair’s all done up, and she’s ready to jump.

For the first time, she isn’t sure that he will catch her when she falls.

***

And then, he has another new face, and his eyes are so much younger than she’s ever seen, and he’s stumbled across her by accident and when she falls, she knows he won’t catch her—and somehow, impossibly, he does.

* * *


End file.
